Is the plurality of subjects compatible with the idea of a Vedāntic
kind of liberation (in which there seems to be no distinction among
different souls)? And can there be an absolute brahman if there are
still distinct subjects?
I just read Kiyotaka Yoshimizu's
Kumārila's Reevaluation of the Sacrifice and the Veda from a Vedānta Perspective (in
Mīmāṃsā and Vedānta,
edited by Bronkhorst and Preisendanz, 2007). The paper elaborates on
thematics close to the ones dealt with by Roque Mesquita (
Die Idee der Erlösung bei Kumārilabhaṭṭa, WZKS 1994) and John Taber (
Kumārila the Vedāntin?, in the same
Mīmāṃsā and Vedānta)
and adds to the debate Yoshimizu's close knowledge of Kumārila in
general and of his less studied works in particular. The article focuses
in fact on the
Ṭupṭīkā, Kumārila's commentary on the last part of the
Pūrva Mīmāṃsā sūtra, and compares it with the fragments of the
Bṛhaṭṭīkā and with the
Tantravārttika.
Kumārila
is the chief exponent of the Bhāṭṭa school of Pūrva Mīmāṃsā and the
Mīmāṃsā is mainly a school of Vedic exegesis. The Vedic sacrifices
necessarily require someone responsible for their performance and
responsibility is explicitly said to be individual. In other words, the
Vedic injunctions enjoin specific individuals and not human beings in
general. Thus, they require a plurality of subjects.
However, Yoshimizu shows how Kumārila accepts the notion of a
paramātman 'supreme Self' in different passages of his works.
paramātman can be used as a synonym of God, Īśvara, but is mostly used as a synonym of the all-encompassing
brahman. The latter would contradict the plurality of subjects which is required by Mīmāṃsā.
Thus, we need to imagine that Kumārila's
paramātman does not entail monism. What else could it mean, then, to say that liberation is the "attainment of the supreme Self" (
paramātmaprāpti, TV, quoted in fn. 6). Given that the
paramātman
seems to be in all authors who mention it a single entity, the TV claim
seems to entail that everyone achieves the dignity of the single
paramātman. How can this not contradict pluralism?
One might suggest that pluralism only exists in the
saṃsāra, but could a pluralistic ontology be compatible with its monistic evolution, given that the
paramātman is said to exist also along the
saṃsāra?
Would it make sense to think of living beings as leaving the proscenio
of their plural world one after the other, in order to dissolve into the
paramātman?
Alternatively, one should think of
Kumārila's claim as entailing an ontology akin to the one later known as
Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta, i.e., only God exists independently, but human
beings are his features (
viśeṣa) and are, hence, not identical with him.
Can you think of other ways out?
P.S. Yoshimizu kindly informed me that he might elaborate further on the topic of the paramātman a new paper for the next World Sanskrit Conference in Bangkok.
